🦁 Advent 4-1
Reflection
Good morning and welcome to the first day of the fourth week of Advent, or Advent 4. 1 as I've been calling it. tHis morning's readings come to us from Psalm 89, 2 Samuel 6, and Hebrews 1. And the thing that stands out to me the, the ark is being brought to Jerusalem. And For years and for most of my even adult life, I thought that that was, that's a great thing, right?
Awesome. Going to the Holy City. But, there's two sides to this story. There always are, right? The more and more I dive into the Bible, the more I realize that God does good with bad things and does bad things with good things, or bad, anyway. So what's not being said is that from the time of the, that the Israelites entered the promised land, the Ark of the, of the Covenant of God had been resting at a city named Shiloh.
Shiloh is just kind of a way station now, it's not really thought of very much, maybe you've heard of it, but this is where they, the tabernacle of God, where the high priest has performed his rites since they had entered the Holy Land, which would have been, you know, I don't know, 10, 20 generations and throughout the time of judges, throughout the time of the unified kingdom, When Saul was king, and up until this point, it had done just fine as a tent in Shiloh.
aNd I say that it's a duality because it is being brought to Jerusalem where David will ask and then have his son build a big, fancy, ornate temple for God. God doesn't ask for this. I'm gonna say that again. God doesn't ask for a temple. God is just fine living in his hooch off in the wilderness. I know that may be like, it seems normal, right?
But like think of the economical or the class distinctions there. Shiloh is close to the border. It's north of Jerusalem by, I want to say a day's walk. The important thing is it's just as temple or this tabernacle, right? The same, you know, tent that was designed you know, built on God's design. By spirit filled craftsmen and artisans and God, God has been fine there.
And the other thing about Shiloh is I think it's not in one of the. kind of favored tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, Benjamin, or Judah, the royal line. And so leaving this humble origin to become this, you know, contested, wealthy kind of status of power. And political power, now that they're a unified kingdom, just like the rest of the nations, just like they asked.
They're going to adapt God's dwelling place to suit their own notions, their own desires to be like everybody else. Now the temple is great, don't get me wrong. But God didn't ask for it, and God was just fine living in a tent in the desert. This will lead to
underestimated or understated economic and class divisions within the tribes of Israel. David will bring it to his tribal allotment, or close to his tribal allotments, in Benjamin, I think, not Judah, but he's consolidating power. Not necessarily in a bad way, but that is the The effect, right? It's closer to his tribal land down in the south in Judah.
You know, Zion is really important. But God didn't ask for this. And the tribes to the north, Shiloh isn't that much farther from the northern tribes, but it is farther, right? It's moving south. And to build the temple, David's son Solomon will use forced labor. He'll use imported goods. He will rely on foreign resources.
And that kind of sullies a bit. Because remember, the tabernacle was built by the same gold that they plundered from the Egyptians. The, the vessels, the, the poles, the, the fabric, all of that stuff came out. of Egypt with them. The menorah, which represented the tree of life. The table for the show bread. All of that stuff.
It's going to be taken down and moved to the, the leaders who lead home. Right? And so the south, as Solomon uses this labor he imposes a tax on Israel and that further exacerbates the differential between the rich And powerful southern tribes and the more modest and rural and agrarian tribes to the north.
If you ever wonder why the tribes divided, one of the contributing factors was the, the distinction, the divide, the, the gap between rich and poor that was created. Or is beginning to be created at this moment when David takes the ark and moves it to closer to the, to his own, his own clan. It becomes harder to share, you know, it becomes harder for the pilgrimage festivals of Sukkot, of Yom Kippur.
You know, now all the Northern tribes have to walk farther and there's more Northern tribes than our Southern tribes. So I can hear in this action, the discontent of those poor who are left out. And so this is a good thing, but it has consequences and not consequences that they, that couldn't have been, you know, anticipated.
aNd I mean a very you know, kind of similar thing happens when they're exiled, when the tribes are finally exiled, you know, in total, the Northern tribes disappear, quote unquote, or lost. And then the cool kids. in Jerusalem are carted off to Babylon, leaving the poor, you know, uninfluential farmers and, you know, mid level Israelites back in Jerusalem, and they become the Samaritans.
The Samaritans have an unbroken relationship with the land, they have their own Pentateuch, they have their own, you know, scriptures, because when The, the influential, wealthy, affluent Israelites are taken off into Babylon. They go through this renaissance, and they, you know, have all these incredible literary and poetic and, you know, prophetic activity that comes out of that.
But the Samaritans, who wanted nothing but to continue to exist in relationship with God and with the land, when those Babylonian exiles return, all of a sudden they regain power with the help of Cyrus, the Persian. And so in all these good things, there can be bad effects. And we have to take, you know, we have to take stock of them.
We have to recognize how even our best intentions, our best ideas, have unintended costs and consequences. This isn't so much this morning about, you know, soldier and civilian, but it is about, you know, enlisted versus commission. It is about who has control and power and influence and who doesn't. And what happens when those who have power use power without thinking about it, without you know, tallying the costs and involving those who might.
Lose something from their decisions. That to me is not, it's not necessarily arrogance, but I think there's a bit of arrogance there in thinking that, you know, I'm a great person, I, you know, I'll make a level-headed decision when I went to Iraq. I thought like, you know, I could, I'll be fine. This is fine.
I'm okay. But the more time I spent there, the more I realized how deep my own biases were hidden. yoU know, I saw all these brown bodies. You know, in 13 months in Iraq, but I wasn't truly affected until I saw another white-skinned American male. aNd so, we have to be careful thinking very highly of ourselves, or rather, we have to be careful not thinking how corrupt we might be, even though we intend, and are vigilant.
In, in maintaining our moral character, we, we slip up. We may make decisions that are, that we think are great and look great on paper, but might hurt others and might come back to haunt us. You know, I think David moving the Ark was, was a God thing, but just because it was a God thing doesn't mean that people aren't going to get left behind and hurt.
And so we have to do this careful, social, scriptural, exegetical work to understand truly what's What God is doing and what God knows is being done and that we may not quite foresee in the moment.
